tonight on "nightline" -- moment of crisis. with a debt disaster looming in washshgton, president obama takes his case directly to the nation. >> if you're fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word. >> seeking support in the confrontation with house republicans. ghost bear. another grizzly bear attack, this time on a group of teens, not far from a pristine wilderness where one of the most elusive bear species of all makes a rare appearance. we set off on the trail of the spirit bear. and mr. nice guy. he's the dark count of creepy. a heavy metal hero. and one of the best-selling artists of all time. alice cooper is tonight's playlist. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with

terry moran, cynthia mcfadden, and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline." july 25th, 2011. good evening. i'm terry moran. we were planning on bringing you robin roberts' extraordinary interview with the hotel maid who's accusing the international banking titan dominique strauss-kahn of sexually assaulting her. and we will bring you that full interview tomorrow because the news tonight is out of washington, where the nation is on the brink of fiscal crisis. just one week away from the august 2nd deadline. there's the clock. the showdown over the national debt spilled over into prime-time television tonight. in dueling addresses by president obama and house speaker john boehner. with one week to go until the united states of america runs out of money to pay its debts, the world watched as the democratic president and the republican speaker of the house hurled accusations at each other. >> for the past several weeks

republican house members have essentially said that the only way they'll vote to prevent america's first ever default is if the rest of us agree to their deep spending cuts-only approach. >> the sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago and he wants a blank check today.y. this is just not g gng to happen. >> a presidential address to the nation -- >> reporter: it was a primetime blame game. president obama argued that republicans just won't compromise, refusing to raise a dime of tax revenues to solve this crisis, because they care more about rich people and big corporations than they do about ordinary americans. >> most americans, regardless of political party, don't understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her medicare before we ask a corporate jet owner or the oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don't get. how can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate

than their secretaries? how can we slash funding for education and clean energy before we ask people like me to give up tax breaks we don't need and didn't ask for? >> reporter: speaker boehner responded by holding firm to the gop line -- no new taxes. >> the president has often said we need a balanced approach, which in washington means we spend more and you pay more. having run a small business, i know those tax increases will destroy jobs. >> reporter: the two men have worked for months, golfing, meeting in public and private, they seem to have struck up a genuine working relationship, like those days of yore in washington when president reagan and speaker of the house tip o'neill did business together. but times have changed. you could hear that tonight in the president's refusal to accept a short-term solution because he argued republicans will just play this game again.

>> again they will refuse to ask the wealthiest americans to give up their tax cuts or deductions. again they will demand harsh cuts to programs like medicare. and once again the economy will be held captive unless they get their way. this is no way to run the greatest country on earth. >> president obama has struggled on this issue, trying to use the bully pulpit of his office again and again. >> we should not even be this close to a deadline. >> where's the leadership? or alternatively,y,ow serious are you actually about debt and deficit reduction? >> the parties are still far apart on a wide range of issues. >> reporter: and again. six times this month. tonight he tried to rally his audience to pressure congress to a deal. >> so i'm asking you all to make your voice heard. if you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of congress know. >> reporter: speaker boehner seized his moment in the spotlight tonight to sum up the gop approach with a pithy statement he later tweeted. >> the solution to this crisis

is not complicated. if you're spending more e ney than you're taking in, you need to spend less of it. >> reporter: but as markets increasingly fret about this dispute and a crisis of unknown dimensions looms, polls show americans are sick of the whole washington scene of bitterness and disgust president obama tried to capture and play to. >> but y y know what people are fed up with most of all? all they see is the same partisan three-ring circus here in washington. they see leaders who can't seem to come together and do what it takes to make life just a little bit better for ordinary americans. they're offended by that. and they should be. >> r rorter: so the bottom line in washington, as another heat wave settles in, no sign of a deal. and the clock is ticking. and we're joined now by abc's senior white house correspondent jake tapper. jake, you're one of the most astute observers of washington that i know. what did you make of what we saw tonight?

>> well, it was a play act of the dysfunction that those of us who have been covering this and watching this for the last month have seen. a president who envisions himself to be fighting for the little guy and seeking a fair and balanced approach. talking about how he wants to work with the house speaker and the speaker wants to work with him but it's these recalcitrant republican house members, these freshmen who are causing the problem -- >> well, let me ask you u out that. this is a relationship that has developed over months as we've seen. is this a sign that it's splitsville between obama and boehner? >> i don't think so. i think the president and speaker boehner have a decent in the same way, oddly enough, vice president biden and house majority leader eric cantor have a good working relationship and seem to like each other. but on this issue there just really doesn't seem to be much middle ground. >> and briefly, what's the talk down there? how does this thing end? >> this is the most bizarre thing, terry.

you and i are old hats in this town at this point. i have never seen it this dysfunctional. and i asked people on all sides, how is this going to end? nobody knows. erybody's confident that something will happen before august 2nd, but nobody can tell you what it will be. and to tell you the truth, it's a little dispiriting to cover, even though as a reporter i enjoy it, as an american it's a little depressing. >> that's for sure. and the clock is ticking. jake tapper, american and correspondent at the white house, thanks. and speaker boehner's website crashed tonight. apparently from the high volume of responses to the president's call for americans to contact congress. stay tuned. well, just ahead, a bear species rarely captured on film. we're going to go in search of the spirit bear. i never saw the traffic stop. it all happened so fast.

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seven steteens on a trainin course in alaska. when they come face-to-face with a mama grizzly. the bear charges. four of the teens are mauled. two critically. all of the teens are expected to recover. attacks like this one on saturday can overshadow the reclusive and even peaceful nature of most bears including one extremely rare species that abc's david wright meets in tonight's encore trip into the wild. >> reporter: the great bear rain forest is not an easy place to get to. we traveled by float plane. there are no roads here. no landing strips. except for the flat stretches of water along the fjord.

what brought us to this remote corner of canada is the spirit bear. black bears with white fur because of a genetic variation. they look like miniature polar >> it's a magnificent bear. and it's extremely rare. >> reporter: the bear sometimes called canada's panda is the marquee species for a region that's also crowded with grizzlies, eagles and whales. but the great bear rain forest now faces a threat. a massive oil pipeline being proposed to bring oil to british columbia so it can be shipped to china. >> the idea of an oil spill in a place like this would destroy it forever. >> reporter: the naturalists who have long fought to protect this place have called in the cavalry. some of the top nature photographers in the world. using their cameras for a cause. >> there are very few spirit bears. if you want to see them young have to put in the 18-hour days for six weeks at a time to see just a few glimpses of this white bear. >> reporter: we found that out the hard way. >> they seem a little bit shy.

>> reporter: our guide, marvin, a tracker for the getgat nation, native to this region. a single wisp of hair on a tree in the forest. >> see that white hair? so that's from a spirit bear. >> reporter: left behind when the bear clawed his signature on to the trunk as a warning to other bears to keep away. >> you can see here one, two, three, four, five claw marks. >> reporter: hopefully we'll run into him. >> yeah, that would be nice if we got to see him. >> reporter: marvin's tribe considers the spirit bear sacred. >> it means white and bear. >> reporter: he says until recently the tribe spoke about them only in whispers. >> we weren't even to talk about it. if we were sitting at the dinner table you know and somebody mentioned they seen one, everybody would tell you to shh, keep it quiet, we don't want too many people to know rr the bear seems only too happy to cooperate. by the end of our first day, the

only spirit bear we saw -- was the totem painted on the wall of the lodge in marvin's hometown, population 150. the tribal elders here strongly oppose the pipeline. >> we need all of you to help us, to help our spirit pear. >> reporter: proponents of the pipeline insist there's no cause for alarm. the pipeline, they note, would skirt the great bear rain forest itself. oil would travel through the region only in modern double hold tankers guided by tug bolts. >> we believe the potential of a spill is remote. we'll also put in very thorough plans about what we'll do in the event of a spill. i think the public needs to understand and be confident we can really spend effectively if there is an incident. >> reporter: the native fishermen are skeptical. >> this is my bread and butter right here. >> reporter: worried any future oil spill here could destroy their r y of life. day two of our hunt forhe spirit bear involved a strenuous

hike into an even more remote patch of woods. is is certainly a bit more off the beaten path. the moss here is so thick and soft you could use it as a pillow. the place so quiet the only sound aside from the rapids comes from the salmons swimming up stream and the ravens flapping their wings overhead. we saw evidence the bears were here. fresh salmon killed on the rocks the river. and in the woods, fresh bear droppings. i guess that answers that question. using a giant log as a blind, we sit quietly by the side of the river. almost immediately, a white form emerged from the woods. a lone wolf, surprised to see any humans at all. black bears came too. one by one. just a few feet away. aware of us but not too curious. and we waited. and waited. and waited in the forest. until the light was fading.

then, disappointed, we trudged out. our last day of shooting, we set off early, hoping for better luck. and suddenly there he was in an open field at the edge of the woods. we've been at this for three days now. this is our first glimpse of the spirit bear. it's just amazing. these white bears are rarer than panda bears. no more than 500 of them on earth. the only place in the world you can see them is right here. you feel like you're seeing a ghost. the way it seamlessly slips back into the forecast. it's amazing. the pictures are what this expedition is all about. raising awareness of a place off limit tossing most humans. one of the last truly wild places on earth. >> we can show the world what's really at stake here. >> reporter: canada's panda is now poised to become the next environmental superstar. i'm david wright for "nightline" in the great bear rain forest.

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he's named darth vader and captain hook as his influences. he's famous for songs like "school's out." he was inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame this year. alice cooper joins us for tonight's play list. ♪ school's out for summer ♪ school's out forever >> the hall of fame is like graduating. it's sort of like you get into this -- you're an upper classmen now. you're sitting there hoping mccartney voted for you. you're hoping pete townshend voted for you. when you get accepted, you figure, well, one of them had to be voted for me.

♪ this will be the last time my dad was a pastor. my dad loved the stones. early rolling stones, you know, like "this could be the last time." he was a big band guy. but he her this music that i was listening to and he goes, you know, it's pretty good. my dad was very cool. he could preach a sermon and tell you who played ba eed basse animals which i thought was great. ♪ i get around "i get around" by the beach boys. when i was about 13 years old that song came out in the summer. so it really brings back the memories of being 14 and jusust almost emerging into getting your own car, getting a job, getting into high school next year. so i get around was like one of the great, great records of all time. ♪ she loves you and you know you should be glad ♪ "she loves you" by the beatles. i was painting the inside of my house in phoenix and listening to normal top 40 radio. all a sudden i heard this sound

that i'd never heard before and it was these guitars. and thesee drums. and it was so happy and so up. i went, wow, that's great. to this day, every time i hear that song, i picture myself painting the -- inside my house. ♪ why don't you all fade away ♪ don't try to exactly the right time was "my generation" by the who. all of a sudden, this explosion comes on the radio. the amps are feeding back. i said, the drummer's going crazy. man thth is a whole new world now. it freed you up. to be a teenage punk. and the attitude of pete townshend. he is the most exciting guitar player on stage of anybodod i mean, jimi hendrix was great but he didn't have the energy that townshend did. >> ♪ oh yeah you really got me now ♪ >> "you really got me" by the

kinks. the guitar sounded like it was barking at you. and it was nasty. and it was, like, brutal. my parents hated it. and everybody else had beatle haircut. these guys had hair to their shoulder. we're pulling on our hair trying to get it longer. all summer, we're going, it's an inch and a half now. to this day, that song when you're in rehearsal, somebody starts that up and you go yeah, you know, it takes you back to that time when you realize rock was definitely changing. it was turning into something else. ♪ no more mr. nice guy ♪ mo more mr. clean ♪ no more mr. nice guy >> alice cooper. thanks for watching abc news. we hope you watch "good morning america." robin roberts will have more of that interview with the hotel maid who says she was assaulted